The man who threw the ball that became the greatest home run in baseball history and perhaps the most indelible moment in American sports is, it turns out, the son of a woman who was born and raised Jewish. Joshua Prager breaks the news today in the New York Times that Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca’s mother, Kati (née Berger), a practicing Catholic who never told her son about her real background, was actually the child of Hungarian Jews who was identified as Jewish when she arrived at Ellis Island; at least two of her siblings died in the Holocaust, at least one at Auschwitz.

The superb article abounds with the 85-year-old Branca’s jovial personality as well as fascinating tidbits (like that the first home run he ever gave up in the majors was to a Jew, Phil Weintraub). Prager is the author of a book on the home run—yes, it is very much a big enough deal as to warrant its own book—which argues that the Giants would at times unsportingly steal catchers’ signs so that batters would know what type of pitch was coming next.

The man who threw the ball that became the greatest home run in baseball history and perhaps the most indelible moment in American sports is, it turns out, the son of a woman who was born and raised Jewish. Joshua Prager breaks the news today in the New York Times that Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca’s mother, Kati (née Berger), a practicing Catholic who never told her son about her real background, was actually the child of Hungarian Jews who was identified as Jewish when she arrived at Ellis Island; at least two of her siblings died in the Holocaust, at least one at Auschwitz.

The superb article abounds with the 85-year-old Branca’s jovial personality as well as fascinating tidbits (like that the first home run he ever gave up in the majors was to a Jew, Phil Weintraub). Prager is the author of a book on the home run—yes, it is very much a big enough deal as to warrant its own book—which argues that the Giants would at times unsportingly steal catchers’ signs so that batters would know what type of pitch was coming next.